MM:面向最终用户的Mashup移动应用开发环境

MM是一款面向最终用户的数据整合应用开发平台,它能够使没有计算机背景的普通用户利用网络上的各种资源,通过简单的可视化操作,快速地构建个性化的数据整合应用,并且可以通过手机随时随地方便地使用这些应用。重点描述了平台的框架,对非专业用户建模的支持,以及数据整合引擎的设计;提出了通过个人电脑开发、手机订制使用的Mashup应用模式;基于原型系统的案例分析验证了平台的可用性。     

A portable toolkit for supporting end-user personalization and control in context-aware applications

A context-aware application in the pervasive computing environment provides intuitive user centric services using implicit context cues. Personalization and control are important issues for this class of application as they enable end-users to understand and configure the behavior of an application. However most development efforts for building context-aware applications focus on the sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms to generate and distribute context cues that drive the application with little emphasis on user-centric issues. We argue that, to elevate user experiences with context-aware applications, it is very important to address these personalization and control issues at the system interface level in parallel to context centric design. Towards this direction, we present Persona, a toolkit that provides support for extending context-aware applications with end-user personalization and control features. Specifically, Persona exposes a few application programming interfaces that abstract end-user customization and control mechanisms and enables developers to integrate these user-centric aspects with rest of the application seamlessly. There are two primary advantages of Persona. First, it can be used with various existing middlewares as a ready-to-use plug-in to build customizable and controllable context-aware applications. Second, existing context-aware applications can easily be augmented to provide end-user personalization and control support. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of Persona and demonstrate its usefulness through the development and augmentation of a range of common context-aware applications.     

Integrated Development of Context-Aware Applications in Smart Spaces

When designing context-aware applications for smart spaces, developers must provide interface specifications for perceptual components, which often come from multiple vendors. The authors outline a set of structuring principles that leverage such specifications. IBM has introduced two tools that facilitate the development of smart space applications. Chilix is a middleware library for bridging disaggregated systems, and SitCom is an integrated development environment enabling context modeling, and simulation and lifecycle management of perceptual components. Chilix provides an attractive lightweight alternative to legacy middleware for distributed computing. SitCom supports perceptual component developers, service developers and context-modeling experts across the development life cycle.     

Monitoring user activities in smart home environments

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) enable smart environments to create pervasive and ubiquitous applications, which give context-aware and scalable services to the end users. In this paper, we propose an architecture and design of a web application for a sensor network monitoring. Further, the variation in received signal strength indicator values is used for knowledge extraction. Experiments are conducted in an in-door room environment to determine the activities of a person. For instance, a WSN consisting of Moteiv’s Tmote Sky sensors is deployed in a bedroom to determine the sleeping behavior and other activities of a person.     

Fusion of smartphone sensor data for classification of daily user activities

Multimedia Tools and Applications - New mobile applications need to estimate user activities by using sensor data provided by smart wearable devices and deliver context-aware solutions to users...     

Usability study of ME2.0

Mobile context-aware applications execute in the background of hosts mobile devices. The applications source process and aggregate hosts’ contextual and personal information. This information is disclosed to ubiquitously pervasive services that adapt their offerings to individual preferences. Unfortunately, many developers continue to ignore the user perspective in context-aware application designs as they complicate their overall task and generate exponential requirements. The additional incorporation of privacy mechanisms in context-aware applications to safeguard context and personal information disclosures also complicates users’ tasks resulting to misconfigured or completely abandoned applications. Misconfigured applications give end-users a false assurance of privacy exposing them to comprising services. We present a usability study on Mobile Electronic Personality Version 2 a privacy enhanced context-aware mobile application for personalising ubiquitous services and adapting pervasive smart-spaces. We draw conclusions on key issues related to user needs, based on user interviews, surveys, prototypes and field evaluations. Users’ needs are evaluated against five themes, learn-ability, efficiency, memorability, errors, satisfaction and privacy contention. In addition, design layout preferences, privacy manageability and consensus design comprehension are also evaluated. Clarity of priorities in context-aware mobile applications shaped by usability studies effectively increases the acceptance of levels of potential users.     

Exploiting smart spaces for interactive TV applications development

The integration of semantic technologies and TV services is a substantial innovation to improve the services to users in an environment that is extended beyond the fixed home environment. But currently, this integration is mainly limited to provide personalized recommendation services and systems by matching user static preferences. Designing and development of interactive TV (iTV) applications using semantic technologies are not realized yet. In this work, we explore the potential of introduction semantic technologies and smart spaces in design and development of iTV applications. We use an example scenario to show how future iTV applications include the mesh-up of information from different sources. We proposed a methodology and show how ontology-driven approach can help to design and develop these iTV applications. We demonstrate the suitability of our ontology-driven application development tools and rule-based approach for the development of highly dynamic context-aware iTV applications.     

An Architecture for Interactive Context-Aware Applications

The interactive behavior of context-aware applications depends on the physical and logical context in which the interaction occurs. The main difference between traditional HCI design and context-aware design is how we deal with context. In this article, we pick up on recent ubicomp community trends, drawing from sociology and focusing on interaction's communicative aspects. So, starting from the premise that interaction is communication, we propose a new interaction model for context-aware applications. We then derive an architectural framework that developers can use to implement our interaction model. The main benefit of our architecture is that, by modeling context in the user interface, developers can represent the application's inferences visually for users     

Conceptual data modeling for realizing context-aware services

Recently, context-aware applications, which provide customized services using personalized contextual information, have gained much attention. However, core IT technologies for realizing context-aware services are not sufficient to support the actual development of context-aware applications. Especially, it is very hard to find studies on context-aware data modeling that can provide different responses even for the same information according to users’ situation. In practice, most context-aware services are managing contextual information in the phase of application development in a rather ad-hoc way. Unfortunately, this approach has an obvious limitation of expansibility when the amount of rapidly increasing contextual information is considered. In this paper, we first define the concept of contextual dependency among data objects. Second, we provide a context-aware data modeling methodology for modeling contextual information into the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD, for short) based on contextual dependency. Finally, we design a simple scenario for context-aware services, construct an ERD from the scenario based on the discovered design rules, and implement a prototype of the service.     

智能家居情境感知服务的运行时建模与执行方法

随着智能家居基础设施的不断发展,智能家居逐渐进入以智能服务为特征的新时期.大量复杂、异构的智能设备相互协同,构成海量、智能、集成的智能家居应用.其中,情境感知服务根据服务对象所处情境的变化为其提供准确的服务,是智能家居应用的典型代表.目前,情境感知服务往往面向场景进行构建,其设备多样性和服务随需性给应用开发带来极大的挑战.开发者需要熟悉设备管理接口、进行接口调用和交互,同时,理解服务功能和质量需求,进行管理逻辑的编写.为了快速定制和开发情境感知服务,将知识图谱引入开发过程,提出一种智能家居情境感知服务的运行时建模与执行方法：首先,提出智能家居情境感知服务知识图谱概念模型,定义其情境中各种概念和关系;其次,提出智能家居情境感知服务知识图谱实例模型的构造与维护机制,通过运行时概念、关系实例表示情境知识;最后,提出基于知识推理的智能家居情境感知服务执行方法,通过知识推理自动执行设备功能.面向实际场景,构建智能家居原型系统.实验结果显示,该方法能够实现情境感知服务运行时建模与执行,其代码减少量超过90%.     

Towards a programming model for context-aware applications

In mobile computing scenarios, users move in different environments and applications can automatically explore their surroundings. This type of context-aware application is an emerging trend, so far not widely disseminated. We believe that the proposal of a programming model specifically designed for the specification of context-aware applications, using general abstractions, will foster a rapidly widespread of such kind of software. In this article, we propose the use of the Holoparadigm (in short Holo) to fill this gap. We created a programming language based on Holo (called HoloL) to demonstrate the strengths of Holoparadigm to develop context-aware applications. The article uses a sample scenario to show the Holo's practical aspects related to implementation of context-aware applications. We also present a platform to HoloL (called HoloEnv), composed of a compiler, a virtual machine, and a distributed execution environment. Finally, different performance aspects of the HoloEnv's components were evaluated through experimental results.     

The value of handhelds in smart environments

The severe resource restrictions of computer-augmented everyday artifacts imply substantial problems for the design of applications in smart environments. Some of these problems can be overcome by exploiting the resources, I/O interfaces, and computing capabilities of nearby mobile devices in an ad-hoc fashion. We identify the means by which smart objects can make use of handheld devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, and derive the following major roles of handhelds in smart environments: (1) mobile infrastructure access point; (2) user interface; (3) remote sensor; (4) mobile storage medium; (5) remote resource provider; and (6) weak user identifier. We present concrete applications that illustrate these roles, and describe how handhelds can serve as mobile mediators between computer-augmented everyday artifacts, their users, and background infrastructure services. The presented applications include a remote interaction scenario, a smart medicine cabinet, and an inventory monitoring application.     

Status and trends of mobile-health applications for iOS devices: A developer's perspective

Modern smart mobile devices offer media-rich and context-aware features that are highly useful for electronic-health (e-health) applications. It is therefore not surprising that these devices have gained acceptance as target devices for e-health applications, turning them into m-health (mobile-health) apps. In particular, many e-health application developers have chosen Apple's iOS mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch as the target device to provide more convenient and richer user experience, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing number of m-health apps in Apple's App Store. In this paper, the top two hundred of such apps from the App Store were examined from a developer's perspective to provide a focused overview of the status and trends of iOS m-health apps and an analysis of related technology, architecture, and user interface design issues. The top 200 apps were classified into different groups according to their purposes, functions, and user satisfaction. It was shown that although the biggest group of apps was medical information reference apps that were delivered from or related to medical articles, websites, or journals, mobile users disproportionally favored tracking tools. It was clear that m-health apps still had plenty of room to grow to take full advantage of unique mobile platform features and truly fulfill their potential. In particular, introduction of two- or three-dimensional visualization and context-awareness could further enhance m-health app's usability and utility. This paper aims to serve as a reference point and guide for developers and practitioners interested in using iOS as a platform for m-health applications, particular from the technical point of view.     

Building ubiquitous QoC-aware applications through model-driven software engineering

As every-day mobile devices can easily be equipped with multiple sensing capabilities, ubiquitous applications are expected to exploit the richness of the context information that can be collected by these devices in order to provide the service that is the most appropriate to the situation of the user. However, the design and implementation of such context-aware ubiquitous appplications remain challenging as there exist very few models and tools to guide application designers and developers in mastering the complexity of context information. This becomes even more crucial as context is by nature imperfect. One way to address this issue is to associate to context information meta-data representing its quality. We propose a generic and extensible design process for context-aware applications taking into account the quality of context (QoC). We demonstrate its use on a prototype application for sending flash sale offers to mobile users. We present extensive performance results in terms of memory and processing time of both elementary context management operations and the whole context policy implementing the Flash sale application. The cost of adding QoC management is also measured and appears to be limited to a few milliseconds. We show that a context policy with 120 QoC-aware nodes can be processed in less than 100 ms on a mobile phone. Moreover, a policy of almost 3000 nodes can be instantiated before exhausting the resources of the phone. This enables very rich application scenarios enhancing the user experience and will favor the development of new ubiquitous applications.     

HTML5-based system for interoperable 3D digital home applications

Digital home application market shifts just about every month. This means risk for developers struggling to adapt their applications to several platforms and marketplaces while changing how people experience and use their TVs, smartphones and tablets. New ubiquitous and context-aware experiences through interactive 3D applications on these devices engage users to interact with virtual applications with complex 3D scenes. Interactive 3D applications are boosted by emerging standards such as HTML5 and WebGL removing limitations, and transforming the Web into a real application framework to tackle interoperability over the heterogeneous digital home platforms. Developers can apply their knowledge of web-based solutions to design digital home applications, removing learning curve barriers related to platform-specific APIs. However, constraints to render complex 3D environments are still present especially in home media devices. This paper provides a state-of-the-art survey of current capabilities and limitations of the digital home devices and describes a latency-driven system design based on hybrid remote and local rendering architecture, enhancing the interactive experience of 3D graphics on these thin devices. It supports interactive navigation of high complexity 3D scenes while provides an interoperable solution that can be deployed over the wide digital home device landscape.     

Design and implementation of a framework for building distributed smart object systems

A smart object system encompasses the synergy between computationally augmented everyday objects and external applications. This paper presents a software framework for building smart object systems following a declarative programming approach centered around custom written documents that glue the smart objects together. More specifically, in the proposed framework, applications’ requirements and smart objects’ services are objectified through structured documents. A runtime infrastructure provides the spontaneous federation between smart objects and applications through structural type matching of these documents. There are three primary advantages of our approach: firstly, it allows developers to write applications in a generic way without prior knowledge of the smart objects that could be used by the applications. Secondly, smart object management (locating, accessing, etc.) issues are completely handled by the infrastructure; thus application development becomes rapid and simple. Finally, the programming abstraction used in the framework allows extension of functionalities of smart objects and applications very easily. We describe an implemented prototype of our framework and show examples of its use in a real life scenario to illustrate its feasibility.     

ContextPhone: a prototyping platform for context-aware mobile applications

Smart phones are a particularly tempting platform for building context-aware applications because they're programmable and often use well-known operating systems. There's a gap, however, between the operating systems' functionality and the features that application developers need. To fill this gap, we've designed and developed ContextPhone, a software platform consisting of four interconnected modules provided as a set of open source C++ libraries and source code components. ContextPhone runs on off-the-shelf mobile phones using Symbian OS and the Nokia Series 60 Smartphone platform. ContextPhone was developed using an iterative, human-centered design strategy. It thus helps developers more easily create applications that integrate into both existing technologies and users' everyday lives.     

Design and validation of a light inference system to support embedded context reasoning

Embedded context management in resource-constrained devices (e.g. mobile phones, autonomous sensors or smart objects) imposes special requirements in terms of lightness for data modelling and reasoning. In this paper, we explore the state-of-the-art on data representation and reasoning tools for embedded mobile reasoning and propose a light inference system (LIS) aiming at simplifying embedded inference processes offering a set of functionalities to avoid redundancy in context management operations. The system is part of a service-oriented mobile software framework, conceived to facilitate the creation of context-aware applications—it decouples sensor data acquisition and context processing from the application logic. LIS, composed of several modules, encapsulates existing lightweight tools for ontology data management and rule-based reasoning, and it is ready to run on Java-enabled handheld devices. Data management and reasoning processes are designed to handle a general ontology that enables communication among framework components. Both the applications running on top of the framework and the framework components themselves can configure the rule and query sets in order to retrieve the information they need from LIS. In order to test LIS features in a real application scenario, an ‘Activity Monitor’ has been designed and implemented: a personal health-persuasive application that provides feedback on the user’s lifestyle, combining data from physical and virtual sensors. In this case of use, LIS is used to timely evaluate the user’s activity level, to decide on the convenience of triggering notifications and to determine the best interface or channel to deliver these context-aware alerts.     

Supporting pervasive computing applications with active context fusion and semantic context delivery

Future pervasive computing applications are envisioned to adapt the applications’ behaviors by utilizing various contexts of an environment and its users. Such context information may often be ambiguous and also heterogeneous, which make the delivery of unambiguous context information to real applications extremely challenging. Thus, a significant challenge facing the development of realistic and deployable context-aware services for pervasive computing applications is the ability to deal with these ambiguous contexts. In this paper, we propose a resource optimized quality assured context mediation framework based on efficient context-aware data fusion and semantic-based context delivery. In this framework, contexts are first fused by an active fusion technique based on Dynamic Bayesian Networks and ontology, and further mediated using a composable ontological rule-based model with the involvement of users or application developers. The fused context data are then organized into an ontology-based semantic network together with the associated ontologies in order to facilitate efficient context delivery. Experimental results using SunSPOT and other sensors demonstrate the promise of this approach.     

基于uSD的情境感知系统设计与实现*

基于移动终端、情境感知以及无线传感器网络的结合需求,提出了一种应用于移动终端的情境感知系统,包括若干无线传感器节点、情境感知及处理终端、应用服务及执行装置等。针对移动电子设备一般都不具备接入无线传感器网络所需功能单元的现状,利用uSD概念为移动终端设计了一个ZigBee通信功能扩展模块,使移动终端能够从无线传感器网络中获取情境信息,并提供相应的情境感知和处理功能。最后,设计了包含位置等信息的情境感知服务演示系统,初步验证了基于uSD的情境感知系统在移动终端上应用的新颖性和有效性。